Downloading songs from YouTube

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:11:36 +0000

Five years ago, I built a song search engine – mainly because I needed to listen to songs. Three years ago, I stopped updating it – mainly because I stopped listening to songs actively, and have been busy since. For those of you who have been using my site for music: my apologies. These days, I don’t really find the need to download music. YouTube has most of the songs I need. Bandwidth is pretty good too even when on the move. But when I do need to download music, this is my new workflow.

Find the song on YouTube. (Misspellings are still an issue, but you’ll usually find what you need)
Download the video. Keepvid is the simple option. youtube-dlis the geek’s option (for multiple downloads)
Use VLC – the swiss-army knife of media – to convert the video into an MP3.

That last step requires a bit of explaining. It’s very simple once you know how, but it took me a few months to get it right. So here goes. Select the Convert / Save option in the Media menu. Click on Add to open file you want to convert. You can pick a track from an disk as well if you want to rip an audio CD or a DVD. Choose the file. Click on Convert / Save. Type the destination filename. Make sure you type the full file name, and not just the name of the folder. Select the output format you want under Settings – Profile. You can tweak the bitrate with the settings button, but I usually don’t bother. When you click on the Start button, the file will be converted or the CD will be ripped. You’ll see the position marker move fairly fast.

The only problem I have with this method is that I can’t seem to do batch conversions easily enough with the GUI. Does anyone have any other workflow they like? Update (31 Jul 2012): Aditya Sengupta suggests the following: (should’ve guessed VLC would have something up its sleeve)

vlc -I dummy $FILENAME --no-sout-video --sout "#transcode{acodec=mp3,5Dab=<wbr>AUDIO_BITRATE,channels=2}:std{<wbr>access=file,mux=raw,dst=$NAME.<wbr>mp3}" vlc://quit

Comments

408wij 15 Mar 2012 1:48 pm: Coincidentally, I just ripped a bunch of MP3s from AVIs last night. I used a Windows program called Format Factory. It supports batch conversion. Some AVIs failed on first past, so I reset their status in the queue and reran.
vB 16 Mar 2012 5:31 am: Hey Try using freemake. The best as per me. You paste youtube URL and select the format you want to save on your machine and it does the rest. btw - found your website pretty neat, do not remember what was i looking for when i discovered it couple of days back, but now have put it on my reader.
Ramanujam 24 Mar 2012 1:18 pm: Alternatively, you can skip all the steps and use one of the numerous sites that will directly give you the mp3. Here is one that works pretty well. http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
Pravin 16 Mar 2012 5:50 pm: I’ve been using this nifty little freeware for a long time and i would suggest it to you if you are interested in an all-in-one video downloading and format conversion. The feature set is really impressive for a freeware. It has also got support for GPU acceleration which might prove use full for those who want to work while conversion is on. http://bit.ly/aayV0
Pravin 25 Mar 2012 12:48 pm: @Sanketh normally flv’s have ~32kbps audio bit rate if you could go for 480p mode you will get ~128kbps(Audio CD Quality) audio bit rate
Pankaj 10 Apr 2012 8:57 pm: Seems you take a lot pain in getting few MP3s. :P Try freemake software (freeware) or even simpler this one http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
Sanketh 20 Mar 2012 3:49 pm: Roughly what bitrate are the youtube flv encoded at?
Ganesh Kondal 4 Apr 2012 4:54 pm: youtube-dl works like a charm. Thanks dude. Using it in Ubuntu 11
Chaitanya 20 Mar 2012 9:01 am: Hey Anand This blog post has been very useful. I just used Freemake and it’s cool and easy. Also, converting few videos using VLC Player. Does it take as much time as the length of the video? Or conversion is slow because I am doing it on my pretty old spec’ed laptop.
Sendhil 17 Mar 2012 6:18 pm: I heard of this one-step workflow from my colleague: http://www.singyoutube.com/
Deepak 17 Mar 2012 7:11 am: I have used Listen to Youtube (http://www.listentoyoutube.com/). Works very well, especially for my son and his nursery rhymes and we dont want to see the computer screen for a long time.
Ganesh 29 Mar 2012 10:50 am: If listening to mp3 is what you want then there are several free mp3 search sites. I use www.mp3skull.com You get a lot of options with various bit rates, and can listen to the song before downloading it.
Vishal Dalmia 24 May 2012 6:46 am: http://musicable.com/ is a simple site that does the download easily with no downloads or installation required.
Vijay Gnanaraj 30 Sep 2012 12:29 am: The next best option wud be IDM, internetdownloadmanager, which can download any video (almost from any website) playing on ur screen
Streaming audio to iOS via VLC | s-anand.net 13 Oct 2012 4:51 pm (pingback): […] listen to it on your iPhone / iPad – converting your PC into a radio station. As with most things VLC related, it’s tough to figure out but obvious in […]

Calvin and Hobbes animated

Thu, 17 May 2007 12:00:00 +0000

A Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, drawn by Dadomani.

Comments

kasi 28 May 2007 1:31 pm: Hi Anand, U must check this http://david-heron.me.uk/blog/2007/04/08/virtual-barbershop with ur headphone vol high.. wid 3d music, its really kewl :) n chk the more links given there
Docsound 29 May 2009 8:45 pm: Calvin and Hobbes cartoon is not drawned by dadomani!

Kinetic sculptures

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Wooden sculptures that move with the wind. These look more like huge insects than scuptures, really. Catch the videos of Theo Jansen’s kinetic sculptures on YouTube.

How to tie a bandage

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

How to tie a bandage without it falling off. It’s in Japanese, but the video is pretty clear.

Google Video Downloader

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Google Video Downloader.

Comments

Madhu 5 Jan 2006 8:40 am: Have you tried www.youtube.com Google will probably take it over!
S Anand 5 Jan 2006 6:00 pm: I use it. But why would Google take over? They already have a pretty good service…
Madhu 6 Jan 2006 12:11 pm: Why not? MSN will take over otherwise.
shekar 14 Jan 2006 11:06 pm: s anand, I saw your Swindon vidoes. They are edited very well. What software did you use? Especially the blue first screen.
S Anand 14 Jan 2006 11:31 pm: Microsoft Movie Maker. It came bundled with Windows XP on my office laptop.

youtube on S Anand

Downloading songs from YouTube

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Calvin and Hobbes animated

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Kinetic sculptures

How to tie a bandage

Google Video Downloader

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